Would someone be willing to give a more detailed explanation on how to do this?

Can someone explain to me how I can create and apply a double-sided material to in Karma?

I found a post on this forum, but it didn't make it understandable for me.

Houdini Launcher fails to log in / connect to the internet, unless I am connected to a VPN.

Hi, I can't find the animation and character related FBX nodes in my H 19.5.569.
Only ROP FBX output and Labs FBX archive import are available.

Are there ways to fix this without having to do a re-install?

Thanks in advance.

@Mohanpugaz

Thank you, I had even followed both of these videos of yours before, but at some point I messed up my houdini.env which seems to have caused SideFX Labs nodes to not work.
Now, thanks to Henry Foster's fixing both Redshift and Labs seem to work fine.

To be clear, I only ever used one houdini.env at the same time, I just replaced it before opening Houdini.
For a short time period.
A silly approach nonetheless.

But thank you for correcting it and yes I should finally look into packages.

I'm sorry I guess the issue was not resolved.
I had created two houdini.env files, one for Redshift and one for Renderman, since I had problems getting them both to work.
And I must have confused them.

#
# NOTE: The use of packages is highly recommended instead of houdini.env
# See details about packages here: https://www.sidefx.com/docs/houdini19.5/ref/plugins.html [www.sidefx.com]
#
# Houdini Environment Settings
#
# The contents of this file are read into the environment
# at startup. They will override any existing entries in
# the environment.
#
# The syntax is one entry per line as follows:
# VAR = VALUE
#
# Values may be quoted
# VAR = "VALUE"
#
# Values may be empty
# VAR =
#

# Example:
#
# HOUDINI_NO_SPLASH = 1

HOUDINI_PATH = C:/CitySampleSource/Small_City/houdini;&

HOUDINI_USE_HFS_OCL = 0

HOUDINI_DSO_ERROR = 2

PATH = "C:/ProgramData/Redshift/bin;$PATH"
HOUDINI_PATH = "C:/ProgramData/Redshift/Plugins/Houdini/19.5.569;&"
PXR_PLUGINPATH_NAME = "C:/ProgramData/Redshift/Plugin/Solaris/19.5.569"
OCIO = "C:/ProgramData/redshift/Data/OCIO/config.ocio"

Oh, it is working now, not sure what did it, sorry for wasting your time.

SideFX labs nodes are only available if I delete the Redshift related variables in my houdini.env

What can I do to circumvent this and have both SideFX Labs and Redshift work?

Can someone try to explain to a normie CPU render engines, why for example, were considered to be more suitable / able in achieving photo-realistic results and why XPU capable engines like Karma and Renderman have some features that are only available in CPU-only mode?

Why would the GPU not be able to handle certain tasks reliably / efficiently / at all?

Image is not available btw.

Using the RBD Bullet Solver, I wanted to flip a truck-sized vehicle, by placing a ramp, affecting the right-side wheels
The goal was to have the vehicle land on it's side after a brief moment in the air, then sliding on the ground

I switch from animation to RBD simulation, just before the wheels would touch the ramp.
In one one tutorial I saw they used the pop force to move the vehicle.
So I used that.
If I wouldn't use the POP Force the vehicle wouldn't move at all.

But once the vehicle is in the air it gains speed, rather than slow down and flies way to far.
Assuming the POP Force is the culprit, even though it is only active shortly.


How do I make the jump shorter?
Can I make the switch from animation to simulation be triggered by the vehicle touching the ramp?

When using the POP Force to move the vehicle, it takes 1-2 frames for the vehicle to speed up, making it difficult to match the animation speed.
Then it apparently gained too much momentum already, and flies way too far through the air.
Do I use the trail SOP to calculate velocity, to be used in the RBD sim, to know the initial velocity, instead of the POP Force?
If so how would I implement this?
In an older video someone showed how to switch from animation to simulation in a Dopnet, using the SOP Solver and an attribute wrangle:
if (@Frame >21{
i@active=1;
i@animated=0;
}

But the internal structure of the RBD Bullet Solver is much more complex and I didn't get this to work.

Thank you for your help.

Thank you for your response.

Then, how do I get out of this mess?
I don't even use the Mixamo animation anymore.
When switching to the main, some of the nodes are not visible anymore, even though the visibility toggle is on.
But on the bright side, when switching back to the Mixamo take, it seems like the previously locked nodes and parameters have become unlocked.
So the state of my project is not as dire as I thought, but still it would be nice if I knew a way to fix this..

Hi, I am in the middle of a project, and for some reason, after opening the .hip again, the recently worked on sop level nodes become un-editable.
For example, when I want to toggle visibility, it says: Permission denied.
But these are not things containing imported locked HDAs, I don't have permission to edit my SOP level nodes, created by me.
Further more the parameters at sop level and inside the geometry nodes are greyed out, except for the ones I modified.

I have no idea why.

Less important:
Since I imported a Mixamo animation all of the parameters have this ugly color, where can I change this?

Enivob
What if instead of sourcing from the center of the walker, you sourced from the pseudopods? Activate life expectancy for the source particles, have the FLIP Solver reap, and they will evaporate over time.

That is a great idea too, thanks for the suggestion. It looks pretty elegant in your GIF. I will try it out.

But I can't let go of my original goal yet. Mostly, because I feel like it shouldn't be that hard, but my knowledge of Houdini is lacking. Also it gives the creature a different vibe, not as menacing as what I was aiming for.
Any ideas as to why the collision geometry might not contain the particles?

My original goal was something like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKXsnbQt5M4 [www.youtube.com]

Fluid or worm-like things flowing along and down the body.

I have been trying to have fluid flow down the legs of this procedural walker:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zH8F5CQerIE [www.youtube.com]

(One iteration was, using the Gas Target Force, as shown in this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rs1Ig5bK0E8&t=1148s [www.youtube.com]
But since the Target is moving and deforming constantly, the liquid moving too hectically, and almost only situated at the legs in the back.

So I thought I would create a container around the walker, to stop the particles, from moving away from their target.
Walker geo -> VDB reshape SDF (dilate)

But I don't manage to create a collider, that contains the particles.
Can someone tell me how to set this up correctly?

tamte
I assume you are not using KineFX as that has its own Locomotion extraction tools, but for any cached deforming geo you can also use extract centroid and transform pieces

Thank you very much, this was very helpful.
I had tried it with the invert transform, but I didn't manage to get it to transform the simulated fluid, in order to match the character's position. With your method, I could simply merge in the fluid before the "transformpieces_to_world".

My bad, this video solved my question:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1Fz4uNvJr4 [www.youtube.com]

I have a procedural walker, and want to use it as the target of a Suction Force DOP, to have liquid flowing around its body.
From what I have seen, the suction force yields better results, if the target is not moving.

I have seen people use a transform SOP and then an invert transform.
But I don't know how keep the character centered in X and Z, every frame, using the transform SOP.

Using Match Size, I can easily center the character on a per axis basis, every frame, but I don't know how to invert the transformation after, to get it back to its original position.